Lewis Steele: Slot’s Liverpool are making bad teams looks good | OneFootball

Slot Facing Familiar Questions After Another Bad Liverpool Display

There was a weary tone running through the latest episode of Media Matters on Anfield Index, as Dave Davis and Lewis Steele dissected another frustrating afternoon for Liverpool under Arne Slot.

The discussion centred on Liverpool’s draw with Chelsea, though the broader concern was far more troubling. For Davis and Steele, this was not an isolated bad performance. It was another chapter in a recurring story that has defined large parts of Slot’s season.

Davis opened with a line that captured the mood perfectly: “God, that Chelsea draw still lingers, doesn’t it? It feels like a defeat.”

That frustration framed the conversation that followed, with Steele delivering perhaps the harshest assessment yet of Slot’s Liverpool.

Bad Habits Continue to Haunt Liverpool

Steele admitted he felt like he was repeating himself every week. “I feel like I say the same every time I come on the show,” he told Davis, before offering a blunt summary of Liverpool’s form.

“You have a little period where they’re good and then, eighty percent of the match, they’re terrible.”

Those words landed heavily because they reflected exactly what supporters at Anfield had witnessed. Liverpool started brightly, took the lead through Ryan Gravenberch, then gradually retreated into themselves. Steele described it as a team abandoning its own strengths.

Photo: IMAGO

“They seem to just forget that they’re good,” he said. “They retreat back on the pitch and they invite pressure.”

It was not merely the result that bothered him. It was the pattern. Steele pointed to several matches this season where Liverpool had allowed struggling opponents to look comfortable.

“Chelsea are a bad team and they came to Anfield and looked like a good team,” he said. “I think that’s what has happened a lot this season with Arne Slot’s Liverpool. He’s made pretty average teams look good.”

Chelsea Draw Sparks Damning Verdict

Steele’s criticism became even sharper as he reflected on the wider consequences of Liverpool’s inconsistency. Referencing dropped points against Wolves, Chelsea and Tottenham, he argued that Slot’s biggest problem was allowing inferior teams to dictate matches.

“Slot is making bad teams look pretty all right,” Steele said. “And that is the biggest legacy of this season for me.”

Davis immediately described that assessment as “a pretty damning one”, and it was difficult to disagree. The frustration inside Anfield was obvious, particularly after Liverpool surrendered control despite taking an early lead.

Davis noted how the atmosphere inside the ground shifted as the team dropped deeper. “Everyone was getting irate, weren’t we? Like, why are you backing off? Why have you stopped playing all of a sudden?”

Steele admitted he could see Chelsea’s equaliser coming long before it arrived. “You could see that Chelsea goal was coming for ten minutes before it did go in.”

That feeling of inevitability has become a recurring issue around Liverpool this season. The team often begins matches with authority, only to lose momentum and confidence as games drift away from them.

Pressure Growing Around Slot

What made this Media Matters episode particularly compelling was the absence of overreaction. Neither Davis nor Steele sounded emotional or theatrical. Instead, there was a sense of exhaustion at watching the same bad patterns repeat themselves.

Davis even described the experience as “groundhog day again”, a phrase many Liverpool supporters would recognise after another afternoon where control disappeared far too easily.

For Slot, the concern now stretches beyond one disappointing draw. Liverpool’s inability to sustain pressure, dominate weaker opponents and maintain authority inside matches has become a defining talking point of the campaign.

As Steele repeatedly stressed throughout the discussion, the issue is no longer occasional. It is structural, visible, and increasingly difficult to dismiss.